The lake house!

This last weekend we drove down to Logo Vista, around Lake Travis, to visit my grandparents for my grandgather's (Papa) 89th birthday. It was the first time Mark has seen the lake house and I haven't been in 10 years. It is always fun to see family, but was a little extra fun to be at the lake.

Their lake house. (It isn't really on the lake, but rather a golf course. Still great views though.)

The back deck.

Around here the deer come right into the yards and sometimes even up to the front doors.

This is a picture of the lake. It is REALLY low. Something like 40 ft I think. The water should be up to the tree line.

Another view of the lake. You can see how low it is again. All that rock is normally covered.

It was nice to be able to have a great weekend relaxing and celebrating Papa's birthday. I hope we have many more to celebrate.

Raisins could kill dogs?

Last week, Wednesday I think it was, Mark and I came home from work and found Dutch with a box of raisins in his mouth. (We are have been trying to ween him into staying out of his crate during the day.) It appears that our precious little boy got bored towards the end of the day and went searching for something to do. He normally likes to get dish towels off the counter and while looking for one he found a box of raisins that was left out.

After we got home Mark looked up the effect of raisins on dogs and found they are VERY VERY toxic. So we called our vet, which was closed, so we called the emergency clinic. The had real concern about the raisins and told us to bring him in IMMEDIATELY. This concerned me, so we brought him in. They made him throw up and he only threw up about half the raisins. (They counted them to make sure.) So they decided that he needed to stay over night for observation and to be given fluids and charcoal to help flush his system.

We were told raisins (and grapes) are very toxic to dogs. It can cause kidney failure, which once it happens they is no way to correct the problem. We were even told that they have seen a maltese go into kidney failure after only consuming 3 raisins. 3! I was shocked. I know Dutch is a larger dogs, but he still had at least 20 raisins in his system! So although the price was high we decided that the best course was to leave him there for observation and fluids. They made it sound like raisins are more toxic then chocolate even, and about as bad as a dog ingesting antifreeze.

Poor guy, we picked him up the next morning and he had a "cone of shame" on and an IV still in his leg. We took him to our vet that day and they kept him a whole day to make sure he was fine. Here are some pics...

We brought him home Thursday night and had to watch him VERY closely as he still had his IV in. So when he went to bed we had to put the cone of shame back on him. 

Thankfully he is all well now. We have him home and he is VERY happy to be home!

BTW... I threw out the rest of the raisins in the house. It just isn't worth it.